Former England captain Ben Stokes in Durham squad to take on Northants at County Ground

The 35-year-old, who stepped away from the Test scene in July, is joined in the league leaders' squad by fellow international ace Matthew Potts, but there is no place for another England man in Brydon Carse.

The fast bowler has been left out 'due to pre-arranged workload management with the ECB'.

There is also a surprise inclusion of David Bedingham, the leading run-scorer in division two this season, after it had been widely reported he was returning to South Africa.

Bedingham has scored 943 runs in the Championship this season, but he is being chased by Northants pair Ricardo Vasconcelos (804) in second and Nathan McSweeney (747) in fourth.

The match at the cinch County Ground also features the competitions two leading wicket-takers, with Durham's Potts top of the pile on 52 with Northants veteran Ben Sanderson second with 47 scalps.

Durham, who are unbeaten in red ball cricket this season, are also set to hand a debut to Indian international batter Mayank Agarwal, who has 21 Test caps to his name.

The match is scheduled to start at 10.30am on Wednesday, but there has been plenty of rain falling in Northampton.

Northants go into the match in third place, level on points with second-placed Kent and 40 adrift of top dogs Durham, who look certainties to claim the title and promotion with just four matches remaining.

Head coach Ryan Campbell is confident his side will get over the line, but knows his team cannot take their foot off the gas.

"If teams are wanting to knock us off top spot, they’ve got to come and catch us," said the Australian.

"The only way they can do that is if we drop our standards. Every day, every hour that we go out there, we’re trying to show the Durham way.

"One of the things that we spoke about at length in the off-season was we had become a bit too reliant on too few individuals.

"We’ve asked our players that everyone needs to step up, and that’s hard, of course, when you’re throwing in Ben Stokes, who’s retired from Test Cricket and is in your line-up, but we don’t want to be reliant on him either.

"I think it’s been pretty cool the way everyone’s stood up.

"We have got a long way to go still. The finish line looks like it’s getting closer, but we’ve got some big tests in the next few weeks, and again, this time of year, we all know that our depths will be tested."

Durham squad v Northants: Colin Ackermann, Mayank Agarwal, Kasey Aldridge, David Bedingham, Graham Clark, Shafiqullah Ghafari, Alex Lees (c), Ben McKinney, Callum Parkinson, Matthew Potts, Will Rhodes, Ollie Robinson (wk), Ben Stokes.